President-elect Obama’s (mostly) financial advisors’ corporate and institutional ties

Below is an NNDB map I made showing the companies and institutions which President -elect Barack Obama’s (mostly) financial advisors have ties to. Now you might say, “well, I’m sure the Clinton and Bush administration advisors were at least as tied in.” Yeah, but once again, my point is this- how much change and how much business as usual can we expect/ hope for here?http://mapper.nndb.com/maps/428/000003419/
Here’s a linked list of the individuals who tied in with all of those institutions, companies, etc.
Eric Schmidt
Antonio Villaraigosa
William Donaldson
Laura Tyson
David Bonior
Robert Rubin
Joseph Biden
Jennifer Granholm
Paul Volcker
Rahm Emanuel
Richard Parsons
Anne Mulcahy
Lawrence Summers
Roger Ferguson
Penny Pritzker
John Podesta
Roel Campos
Robert Reich
William Daley

perhaps you recall that in my previous post I posted a list of some of the largest contributors to Obama’s campaign (from OpenSecrets)
names which were on that list and also show up on the advisors’ ties map include:
Goldman Sachs
JP Morgan Chase
Citigroup
Time Warner
Morgan Stanley
Google

Pressing President elect Obama for meaningful change

Okay, congratulations to all of you who voted for Obama. Working under the assumption that most of you probably were voting for a change when you did so, electing a President is only the first step in that process. Despite the fact that both houses of Congress and the White House will be controlled by Democrats for the first time in over 14 years Democratic leaders are already “scaling back expectations” and talking about moving towards the middle.

As readers of my blog should be aware, I’ve been a skeptic of how much real change an Obama Presidency would actually represent. Looking at top donors to his campaign, we find the following list from OpenSecrets:

University of California	$909,283
Goldman Sachs	$874,207
Harvard University	$717,230
Microsoft Corp	$714,108
Google Inc	$701,099
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$581,460
Citigroup Inc	$581,216
National Amusements Inc	$543,859
Time Warner	$508,148
Sidley Austin LLP	$492,445
Stanford University	$481,199
Skadden, Arps et al	$473,424
Wilmerhale Llp	$466,679
UBS AG	$454,795
Latham & Watkins	$426,924
Columbia University	$426,516
Morgan Stanley	$425,102
IBM Corp	$415,196
University of Chicago	$414,555
US Government	$400,819

In other words, quite a few financial institutions and media corporations at or near the top of the list. Considering how much good press Obama has gotten over the past couple of years compared to say John Edwards (remember before the primary season started all those articles about Obama and Hilary with hardly a mention of any other Democratic contenders?) this is hardly suprising. So, if you go back to sleep now that you’ve voted, how much change do you expect to see? If you assume that Obama really wants to help regular Americans (as opposed to corporate interests), Americans will need to help him. National leadership is not enough to effect real change anymore. It neds to start at the bottom and carry national leadership along with it. So, don’t even think about going back to sleep now… now it’s time to put those dreams to the test. Good luck, we’ll need it.

Digging 9/11 clues out of the old version of Google

In celebration of their tenth anniversary, Google has given searchers the ability to see their search results from the 2001 era. In honor of this ability (who knows how long it will be available, better look quickly) I did a few 9/11 related searches based on some of the more recent research I’ve done. Searches such as “world trade center” + asbestos, “amalgam warrior” and “national special security event”, for example. I put up a few posts at the pilotsfor911truth forum on a few results which I found interesting, so I won’t go into them at great length (or copy them over) here.

New cuil (pronounced cool) search engine is a Google hot trend

So, here’s a (maybe) cool hot trend for today, there’s a new search engine in town… I even got a referral earlier from them for 9/11 Truth (a category which I’ve neglected lately, mostly putting things which could go in there in either Zeitgeist or Sibel Edmonds) though I doubt I would have noticed cuil particularly this morning without their hot trendiness

Hot Trends (USA)

Jul 28, 2008
1. cuil
2. cuil.com
13. new search engine
16. www.cuil.com
31. cuil inc
60. cuil search
63. kuil

I managed to get one search to go through with results (and one without), but the page loads pretty slowly at the moment, no doubt due to high traffic volume. I like their privacy policy

when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

More precisely:

Logs
We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity.

So far, I wasn’t exactly impressed with the actual search results, however. I’ll give them a fair chance to get things going, though. I’m all for competition for Google. And search engine privacy, did I mention privacy already? Yeah, that too. Polymeta still gets the lion’s share of my searches, though.

TechCrunch compared some search results for G and C and posted results here

and even TechCrunch’s online/offline status post on cuil makes tailrank news….

Cuiling Cuil may or may not be cuil, but with only 121,578 results so far (none that I saw were about a search engine) it’s not likely to “break the internet”, at least not today- like googling google is supposed to.

Cuiling cuil doesn't break the internet quite yet, unlike googling Google is supposed to

Results 1 – 10 of about 2,720,000,000 for google

 Then again, it’s a few hours old vs. going on a decade for Google.

Polymeta searching cuil

ETA:
now performing even better on the hot trends list, as follows:
1. cuil
2. new search engine
3. cuil.com
11. kuil
17. www.cuil.com
26. cuil inc
28. kool
30. cool
37. ciul
47. cuil search
52. cool.com

impressive buzz…

and one more update for the top of the hour… the trend seems to have peaked last hour, but the creative misspellings continue to pile up.
2. cuil
6. cuil.com
13. kuil
16. www.cuil.com
18. cull search
24. ciul
33. cool search
47. cool.com
56. cuil inc
58. kool
67. cuil wiki
87. quil
89. guil

ETA: for awhile now, polymeta has included cuil’s search results within its offerings. Just one more reason for me to like polymeta and probably not bother much with keeping up with cuil… even though they do show up as a result in their own search engine now.

Chickens coming home to roost for Google/YouTube in Viacom lawsuit

Last week a US court ruled that “Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube”.

Google must divulge YouTube log
Remember those IP addresses which Google was arguing should not be considered personally identifiable information earlier this year?

Leading privacy expert Simon Davies told BBC News that the privacy of millions of YouTube users was threatened.

He said: “The chickens have come home to roost for Google.

“Their arrogance and refusal to listen to friendly advice has resulted in the privacy of tens of millions being placed under threat.”

Mr Davies said privacy campaigners had warned Google for years that IP addresses were personally identifiable information.

Google pledged last year to anonymise IP addresses for search information but it has said nothing about YouTube data.

Mr Davies said: “Governments and organisations are realising that companies like Google have a warehouse full of data. And while that data is stored it is under threat of being used and putting privacy in danger.”

The EFF said: “The Court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube.

Proskauer Rose attorney Louis Solomon said the parties are now debating how to share the YouTube data with individual IP addresses masked, but while still ensuring that different users can be distinguished.

source Why worry about masking them if they aren’t “personally identifiable information”?

Don’t give Google a free pass on data collection, privacy advocates say after YouTube ruling

“Google has a business practice of retaining all the search queries of YouTube viewers,” Rotenberg said. “It is this practice that puts consumer data at risk.”

The end result, he added, “is exactly what were warning about” during a court dispute between Google and the U.S. Department of Justice over Internet search data two years ago.

In that case, the DOJ subpoenaed Google to turn over records on millions of search queries that the government said it needed as part of an effort to defend the Child Online Protection Act from legal challenges. EPIC supported Google’s ultimately successful effort to oppose the subpoena, Rotenberg said. But, he added, the privacy group cautioned even then that as part of the discovery proceedings in criminal or civil cases, Google could at any time be asked to turn over users’ personal data.

Google’s continuing habit of storing highly detailed search data so the information can be analyzed for targeted marketing purposes poses a “real concern” for U.S. residents, Rotenberg said. As the decision in the Viacom case demonstrates, “companies can’t always control who has access to this sort of data,” he noted.

Furthermore, Google’s argument that the IP addresses stored in the YouTube logging database represent personally identifiable information is at odds with the company’s previously stated views on that issue, according to Rotenberg. In cases such as its dispute with the DOJ, Google argued that IP addresses and the other search-related data was practically useless in helping anyone to identify an individual, Rotenberg said. Stanton made the same point in his July 2 ruling in favor of Viacom.

“There is a clear contradiction in Google’s position, that they will assert privacy interests when it is in their favor to do so,” Rotenberg said.